Modern networking continues to provide an improvement in communication and information access. As an example, in-house data centers, associated with a particular entity of interrelated group of users, could contain a large number of information technology (IT) resources that are interconnected through a network. These networks are configured in different ways depending on implementation-specific details such as the hardware used and the physical location of the equipment, and depending on the particular objectives of the network. One common type of network configuration is a local area network (LAN). In actual practice, a typical LAN will include large numbers of computer systems, switches, routers, load balancers, firewalls, and the like.
Many modern networks also include a plurality of redundant subsystems such as servers, disk logical units (LUNs) in a disk array, network switches in the LAN, and the like. In addition, a network may be organized in a virtual LAN (VLAN) including a plurality of the resources within the LAN network. In some cases, the collection of computational devices contained in these VLANs is referred to as farms. The network is referred to as a VLAN because the actual network (e.g., the wiring, cables, etc.) is not reconfigured, instead, the network will be virtually assigned (e.g., with the use of software) the resources specific to the VLAN. Thus, the physical network remains the same, but the actual utilization of the network can be divided into distinct LANs virtually.
For example, a user may request a farm including a server, a LUN, and two ports on a network switch. The network will then select, configure and deploy the computational devices to establish a farm of devices for the user. The user's farm would then be active as long as the user requested it and/or utilized it. After the user was finished with the farm, the resources would be reabsorbed into the resource pool to await reassignment.
During the set-up of the network, there may be a plurality of selectable redundant subsystems to be sorted into primary and secondary resources. In general, the primary resource is the first resource chosen when some action is required by the host system. For example, if there are two paths to a disk drive, the primary path is the one chosen first when there is a transaction required of the disk. However, currently the selection of the primary resource is based on a hardware or software convenience or by simple ordinal conventions. For example, if the set of resources are numbered or addressed as 0 to n, the normal default is to select the resource 0 as the primary resource. In the case where the resource 0 is not the best resource in the pool of resources, selecting 0 as the primary resource will deleteriously effect the operation of the subsystem and even the network.
This method of selecting primary resources based on device address is worse than even a random method of selecting. For example, since the primary resource selected is always the same resource, e.g., resource 0, if resource 0 is slow or error prone each primary resource selection will result in a slow or error prone system. Additionally, when the primary resource is error prone, the opportunity for an unscheduled switchover to a secondary system is increased. As is well known, unscheduled switchovers often result in loss of data, system downtime, system slowdown, and the like.